Keeping It Going

I called in at my studio on Monday evening to empty the flower vase which I suspected might be full of very past-it flowers, steeped in stagnant water. I was right and I’m glad I rescued them before the acrid smell of dead, mouldy flower stalks started to affect other artists’ enjoyment of the open plan space.

Being concerned with such matters – and what I’ve left out when I’m away from the studio – makes me question how appropriate an open space might continue to be for me in the long term. Unless I have time to leave my studio in a state that I’m happy with, it tends to play on my mind – niggling away and making me feel I have to go back there – often, when I haven’t really got time – and sometimes, when I just don’t want to be there.

I often think about how the open plan environment might impact on my way of working. Would my work have more of a chance to develop if I could close a door on my studio, whatever sort of state it might be in, and leave the work to just ‘be’ until I return to it – at a time when I want to, rather than feel compelled to? I sometimes wonder if certain aspects of the work might get lost in the process of tidying away – and perhaps, also, through hurrying the work along at too fast a pace? There’s a lot to be said for allowing things to take their natural course, I always think.

That said, it makes me feel tense to even think about any sort of additional disruption at this particular point in time. Stuart Mayes (artist/blogger of ‘Project Me’) posted a comment on my blog some weeks ago which I’ve conveniently pushed to the back of my mind:

‘… is there a way that you can make it more private so that you feel less exposed? Your studio should be somewhere that gives you the space you need to be the artist that you are!!’

I’ll no doubt want to address the points Stuart raised in due course. They touched a nerve, after all – I’m constantly struggling with issues around the concept of the public versus the private.

As it is, my time over the next few visits will be pretty much consumed with getting my studio back into some sort of order. More stuff has been added as a result of clearing my sister’s attic and my working space, not for the first time, has been completely taken over with boxes – getting some of them packed away will need to be my first priority if I have any hope of getting any work made. But like I said, even the thought of any imminent change of studio makes me tense and anxious – another thought for another day, then …

The author of the BBC article in the meantime claims that we have six times more ‘stuff’ than past generations:

http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/business-26921870

My intrigue about and research into collecting is ongoing. When did it all begin for me, and for what reason? Why did I choose to collect the things I did? What affected my decisions when it came to deciding what to keep from the home of my late Nana, for example? What drives other people to collect the things they do? What drives some people to collect and others to be able to detach and rid themselves of any emotion whatsoever in relation to the things around them. Is there a common denominator?

The questions continue …

There’s a strong parallel between the ageing process I wrote about in my last post and these past few days’ ongoing finds in the boxes. It’s all about history and the passing of time; so much personal history and by association, so much political, social and cultural comment contained within the objects I’m bringing out of storage.

It’s over twenty years since a lot of them were packed away; life has moved on in all sorts of ways and I have changed. How relevant are these things to me? Here, right now, in the present? How much am I able to let go?

I wrote about the items of clothing and assorted accessories in my last post – those which, in all senses of the word, just don’t fit any more. Did I really have such a small waist! Did my feet really fit into those 1950s suede stilettos? Hard answers to come to terms with in many ways, and in any case, any amount of acceptance doesn’t necessarily make things more palatable.

The items in storage have become representative of the ageing process – they’ve aged and so have I, as well as the people around me – it’s an inevitable (but not necessarily welcomed) fact of life. And there’s that fine line again – between life and death and the fragility of human existence. Loved ones might die and yet, their clothing and personal effects still remain.

Similar feelings are stirred up by a lot of the other items making up my collections – books, photos, ceramics, letters and all their associative memories. It’s the objects as emotional containers that interests me most. After all, it’s the emotional attachment I’ve formed with the collections that’s responsible for them still being around me. Something drove me to keep certain things, just as something is telling me that now is the right time to detach myself from a lot of them – to shed some of the past, to retain the very ‘best’ of what I own and consequently, to lighten the load – to focus instead on the present and the future.

But not without some careful consideration – it’s much harder, emotionally to part with things than it appears on the surface. William Morris said :

‘Have nothing (in your house) that you do not know to be useful, or believe to be beautiful.’

It’s a tall order, especially if you’re prone to seeing beauty in just about everything – and the more broken, weathered and beaten up, the greater the appeal for me.

Since the frenetic sorting of the past few weeks has calmed down, I’ve had time and space to think about the very act of collecting – what it’s meant to me over the years and what it means now. One of the positive aspects of ageing is that sense of ‘knowing’ yourself – I don’t feel I need the paraphernalia around me to define who I am as I did in my student days, for example – the CND and feminist posters that let people know which side I was on as soon as they walked into my home. I’ve experienced moments of real excitement, reacquainting myself with blasts from the past, to moments of sadness about the fast pace at which life is passing me by.

My collections define me in terms of my age and my place in the world – you have to be a certain age for Sandy (in his wheelchair) David (in his cravat) and Benny in his hat to mean anything to you. Re-finding The Crossroads Motel jigsaw puzzle is a good example of finding something that excites, amuses and brings memories of my teenage/student years flooding back. But it also raises the question of what to do with a lot of these re-found items. Yes, the puzzle depicting all the Motel’s best-loved characters is amusing – it’s retro and it’s probably quite unique. But it’s also a classic example of something I really don’t know what to do with. Maybe that’s the title of my next piece of art work – Things I Really Don’t Know What To Do With.

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The whole issue of ageing and the passing of time is pertinent to the sorting process. There’s nothing like opening up a box full of vintage Oor Wullie and Schoolgirl annuals, or a suitcase full of retro hats and clothing, to jolt your memory, transport you right back in time and evoke the sweet memories of youth.

It’s over 20 years, maybe more, since I’ve worn any of these carefully preserved items of clothing and it’s made me acutely aware of the many issues around ageing. ‘Mutton dressed as lamb‘ is a phrase that’s sprung to mind more than once as I’ve looked lovingly at various pairs of shoes, hats and dresses, made of the most exquisite fabrics, and resigned myself to the fact that, never mind too big, I am also now too old to wear them.

Consequently, I’ve shifted from feeling I could never part with these unique, one-of-a-kind garments, to accepting that I could. I won’t actually ever wear them again and the time has come to move them on – for the next generation. Timing is everything – I’m ready and it feels okay – a relief, in fact, to let go.

My sister’s attic has now been totally emptied and the one hundred or so bags that were filled with pre-sorted items of clothing and accessories have been condensed to around thirty. I have been selective and picked out only the best quality items of clothing, hats, shoes and handbags left over and stored since the days when I sold vintage clothing to supplement my income.

There are both negative and positive aspects to having collected what I have over the years – on the one hand, feeling dragged down by the sheer volume of it all – on the other, experiencing moments of pure joy when I rediscover things that frankly, just seem irreplaceable.

What to do with them has been the big question; a lot has been packed off to various friends, family members and charity shops and a lot more is being held in reserve for a fundraising day I’m holding in May.

And of course, a proportion of it is being kept as raw materal for my creative practice – the art I’m currently making, based around objects and their associative, autobiographical narratives and the art that I will almost certainly make in the future.

I struggle still with the desire to keep everything – it all has the potential to my mind to ‘come in handy’ one day. But I’m increasingly finding myself with the ability to be more ruthless – and accepting that what can’t be sold, donated or given away, simply has to go. Despite all my best efforts to unite everything I own and have all my possessions together in one space, I’m starting to accept that it might not be possible. I can’t underestimate the sheer volume of stuff I’ve accumulated over the years. There simply isn’t enough room to keep everything.

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With so much time being consumed with schlepping boxes and bags from my sister’s attic into my car, then transporting them to my home where I slowly sort through them, it’s been more difficult to get into the studio. But I have managed to get there, even if it’s just for brief, snatched periods of time – often to match up something I’ve found in the day which I know will be ‘just right’ alongside something in the studio – I can’t tell you what a thrill this gives me! (Sad, I know – but honest, at least).

My main focus when it comes to these choices seems to be colour, prompted by the amazing range of hues and shades of things I’ve found when sorting – all so evocative of certain eras. Colour has been the main emphasis in collecting together the various items and imposing some sort of order on them. It’s been interesting to work with different types of material and the 1960s plastic doilies, table placemats and flowers have opened up a completely new colour palette for me – all very symbolic of the passing of time, changing trends and fashions and the consequent physical changes I saw in my Nana’s home, in which she lived for over 70 years.

Plastics of the 1960s have their own distinct colour range and I’ve focused on bringing together the various plastic objects I’ve found in the assorted bags and boxes. I’ve placed them on the plain walls of the studio and onto different types of formica/wood effect backgrounds and photographed them, trying to make some sort of sense and order of them, in order to fully appreciate their appeal.

Certain things have transported me right back to specific moments in time – childhood days and memories of certain rooms – in my Nana’s home, as well as my own – the pictures on the walls, the placemats on the table, the doilies on the sideboard, the plastic flowers in a jug in the front room.

Plastic is mass-produced and robust – indestructable, at the same time as being throwaway, ironically – a million miles away from the preceding days of careful preservation and the ‘make do and mend’ way of caring for worldly possessions. Working with objects made of plastic is in sharp contrast to the materials I’ve worked with more recently – in terms of colour, in terms of their availability and in terms of how I handled and treated them. The mass-produced plastic items feel so much less precious than those from the 1930s/40s era; those I used in the ‘Here Today’ assemblage, for example – the handcrafted mirror, the handmade silk velvet flowers – have a certain aura about them – of being unique, one-offs, precious and in need of being preserved, respected and tenderly looked after. This contrast has made me think yet further about the importance and value of objects – how much they represent in terms of our identities – socially and politically, and also in relation to our cultural identities. And our place – our social standing – in the world.

I’ve felt invigorated and excited by the new ideas that the sorting has introduced, leading me to an ongoing work in progress, one which I’m excited to explore further. My current working title ‘Nana’s Colours‘ has become the collective name I’ve given to the various small, simple assemblages I’ve made during these short bursts of art making. It’s felt important to keep making art amidst all the chaos and upheaval caused by this past month’s massive sorting; it’s helped ground me. And I’m pleased with some of the results that the gathering together of various bits and pieces of fabrics, objects, books and other things has created.

Now I can’t wait to see what the future brings, in terms of getting back into the studio regularly again to make art. I’m currently negotiating a chunk of time in my head when I can be there for a good few solid hours – to immerse myself and see what comes of spending time with yet more of the new material I’ve recently taken into the studio. And I’m already looking forward to reporting back – there’s a grounding effect to writing this blog, too.

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Half an hour or so after publishing this post, this film came to my attention, sent by a friend: http://www.telegraph.co.uk/men/thinking-man/107292…

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I’ve been itching to get back to writing here – so many things I’ve wanted to share about the past month’s serious sorting. And I do mean serious. Dozens of bags and boxes from the past – all stored in my sister’s attic, untouched for the past eight to nine years. My sister’s impending house move has forced me to make decisions about a) which items I’d like to keep from the numerous boxes of clothes, books, ceramics, etc and b) whether I have sufficient space to store them.

I’ve collected a considerable amount of stuff in my life – there is no escaping that fact. At times it’s felt like a burden, weighing me down and making me feel completely stuck. But at the back of my mind, I’ve known that there would come a day when I would need (and feel ready) to face the sheer volume of accumulated stuff – head on. Perhaps that time is now. Certainly, I’ve made the decision to fully embrace my collections – to accept the enormity of them rather than remain shy of admitting to the sheer volume of them and to stop skulking around, feeling guilty and embarrassed about them.

Sorting through this latest batch of stuff has been an emotionally as well as physically demanding time, though I’ve managed to stop myself feeling quite so overwhelmed this time round; experience has taught me that a measured and positive approach to the whole process of sorting is more beneficial. An acceptance, too that any kind of delving into the past has the potential for bringing up a whole range of emotions, not all of them welcomed – the losses, regrets, the inevitability of ageing and the passing of time and so on. Being prepared helps, to some extent.

With this shift in my thinking, I’ve started to enjoy the whole process more; to view the sifting and sorting as less of a necessary evil and more like a useful and worthwhile task in relation to my creative work – these things after all, provide the raw material for the art I make.

I’ve had moments of feeling excited about reconnecting with some of the things in my sister’s attic – books, for example, that I remember reading to my sons included a 1960s Deans fairy tale book of my own – classic, familiar tales, beautifully illustrated. In the knowledge that I can’t keep everything, I showed my now grown-up sons the book, eager to know how many of the tales they remembered. Rapunzel? Hansel and Gretel? The Princess and the Pea? Sleeping Beauty? Their reaction was matter-of-fact – they remembered some of them, but it wasn’t the momentous response that I’d thought (hoped?) it might have been. While it meant so much more to me, to them it was just a book from their past. And hard though it is, through accepting this, I’ve been able to let go of the book. It indicates a shift in my thinking – I can’t (and neither do I want) to keep everything.

But like all good fairy tales, there’s often a darker undercurrent at work and as well as joyful reunions, I’ve also had moments of feeling totally churned up about reconnecting with some of the items from my past. There’s a sad and upsetting story behind the 1980s salmon pink, silk dress I refound, for example – the emotional impact of finding it again took me quite by surprise. It’s a story I might decide to share here one of these days but for now, despite the years that have passed, it all feels too raw and in need of some careful processing. I know I don’t want the dress, but what I do with it is another matter. My strong feelings about it will no doubt subside, but my gut feeling at this moment in time, is that I’m just not able to throw it away – that it requires some sort of proper, significant letting go ceremony, whether real or symbolic. Feelings change by the day of course, so I’ll see how it all unfolds.

About a dozen more boxes and bags in the attic to sort through in the meantime – and then the joys of getting back into the studio and focusing on new work that has stemmed from this whole sorting process. I can’t wait.

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